Posted by
Defend America on Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:36:30 PM
An Unconstitutional Mandate [Hans A. von Spakovsky]
When
Nancy Pelosi
was asked where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans
to buy health insurance, she dismissed the question by saying, “Are you
serious? Are you serious?” According to CNSNews, her press spokesman
said that this authority comes from Congress’s “constitutional power to
regulate interstate commerce.” However, as a new legal memorandum from
Heritage
points out,
Speaker Pelosi is completely wrong: The individual insurance mandate is
both unconstitutional and unprecedented (there is a two-page executive
summary for anyone who does not have time to read the entire
memorandum).
There is no question that the Supreme Court has
upheld extensive regulation of economic activity through the Commerce
Clause, but it has
never upheld any requirement by Congress
that an individual participate in economic activity. There is nothing
in the Constitution that allows Congress to punish you if you don’t
engage in commerce. Liberal law
professors and editorial writers such as Erwin Chemerinsky of UC-Irvine and Ruth Marcus of the
Washington Post try to gloss over this point, and won’t admit that the Supreme Court has never approved any such requirement.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzhiYWYwMjYyODUyMDAxMmQyN2Q3MGI5ZmFmZDgzODY=